


Miss Aba

by Mairead1916



Category: Gangs of New York (2002)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Original Character-centric, Separate Childhoods
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-06-10 06:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15286002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mairead1916/pseuds/Mairead1916
Summary: Separated from her brother, Amsterdam, at the age of six, Abigail Lee (previously known as Gael Vallon) grows up as a ward of the wealthy Langdon family. Never fully at home among New York's moneyed elite yet also distanced from the Irish heritage of her birth, Abigail struggles to find her place in society. When a chance encounter reunites Abigail and Amsterdam, Abigail has to decide where her loyalties lie and which world she wants to live in--the wealthy world of the Langdons or the hardscrabble world of her brother and his friends.





	1. Chapter 1

1852 

Gael didn’t remember her father—she had only been one when he died—but her older brother, Amsterdam made sure she had a clear picture of him, or at least a magnificent one. As Gael got older, she began to notice the shifting details of Amsterdam’s stories, but she attributed this to Amsterdam’s relatively young age at the time of their father’s death—Amsterdam had only been six—and assumed that, even if Amsterdam’s memory of their father was less than dependable, the stories he told must have captured the general spirit of their father. She knew her father was tall, practically a giant, and fearsome. The story used to go that he was taller than a bear standing on its hind legs, but Gael had never seen a bear so this didn’t mean much to her. Then, Amsterdam said that he was taller than Saint Patrick and even mightier than when Patrick cast the snakes out of Ireland, but Gael had never seen Saint Patrick either, and neither had Amsterdam for that matter, so this was also not an excellent measure. Eventually, Amsterdam told Gael that their father had been as tall as the orphans’ homes they lived in, which was two stories tall, and Gael had considered this a good point of comparison and believed it for a time, but, now that she was five—almost six—she was growing skeptical. All she knew for sure was that her father had been tall.

And powerful. Everyone who fell under his protection, everyone in his group the Dead Rabbits, knew him to be a kind, gentle man, a holy man who could quote scripture in English, Irish, and Latin. But anyone who did not fall under his protection, anyone who made themselves an enemy of his people, knew him to be a skilled, ruthless fighter, a righteous man with God on his side.

This was how their father, Priest Vallon, had died, leading the Dead Rabbits in battle against the coward Bill the Butcher and his gang the Natives, who hated all Irish people. Amsterdam told Gael that Priest had fought off ten men at a time, charging through them to reach his target, Bill the Butcher. The two men fought for hours, Priest maintaining the upper hand until the very end, when Bill, by means of some dirty trick—what specifically, Amsterdam had never said—managed to stab Priest in the back, leaving him to bleed out in the street.

And so Gael had been raised not by her mother, who had died in childbirth, or her father, but rather her brother, who taught her to be proud of her heritage and to be tough, to not give an inch to the Good Protestants who ran the orphans’ home. When Gael and Amsterdam first entered the home, the orphans’ benefactors had rechristened Gael as Abigail, reasoning that she was young enough to forget her old, uncivilized name and accept the new one without question. In some respects, they were right. Gael would have accepted the new name, never knowing what her parents had actually intended for her, but Amsterdam didn’t let that happen. He reminded Gael of her true name at every turn, reminded her that it declared her as a Celt, that it literally meant “Irish person.”

Gael’s life at the orphanage was relatively happy, at least whenever she and Amsterdam were together, which was most of the time—the founders of the home had envisioned a place where boys and girls would be kept separate so as to avoid temptation and learn their appropriate spheres but the actual caretakers couldn’t be bothered and were certainly not going to go to the trouble of raising a little girl when her brother would happily do it for them. The hardest parts of the day were when Amsterdam went to school, something Gael wasn’t old enough to do yet. While the older children learned about the Bible and the history of Europe, the younger children were mostly left to amuse themselves. They devised games for themselves and constructed balls out of whatever they could find, but could never fully abandon themselves to enjoyment as they were always in danger of drawing the ire of Earnshaw, the meanest of all the caretakers. Amsterdam had earned himself countless beatings and whippings at the hands of Earnshaw, but Gael had thus far managed to avoid this. She knew some of the beatings Amsterdam had taken had been on her behalf and, while she felt guilty about this, she also feared what would happen to her if Amsterdam were not there to protect her. She had seen that Earnshaw took a special interest in the girls as they got older and heard that their punishments were often different from those meted out on the boys. Amsterdam had told her to stay away from Earnshaw at all costs.

In addition to her anxiety over being left alone, Gael was also eager to join Amsterdam at school in order to learn everything he was. Amsterdam never made a big show of his education—being booksmart was generally looked down upon at the orphanage—but Gael knew he could read better than most of the older kids. When rich patrons of the home came to visit, Gael and Amsterdam would pick their pockets, celebrating whenever they found a book or newspaper before disappearing to a corner where Amsterdam would read it aloud. Often, other kids would join them but Amsterdam always shooed them away when the throng grew too big and attention-grabbing. Gael knew Amsterdam liked drawing a crowd though, even if he pretended not to. She watched him lean forward and widen his eyes during especially dramatic passages, pausing at just the right time to heighten the suspense. He held the children transfixed as they sat still for perhaps the first time that day. In these moments, the busy turmoil of the orphans’ home stopped. Gael could close her eyes and listen to the story without fear of being disturbed, without anyone insulting her or kicking her or stealing anything from her or wanting anything from her at all. Her peers were too engrossed to bother with her. Beyond the thrill of the story, Amsterdam’s readings created quiet in a sometimes viciously noisy place. Gael wanted to be able to do this too and, at five—almost six—she was just a few short months away from starting school herself.

“How many days til I can go?” she would ask Amsterdam and he would count the days by making tallies in the dirt.

“It’s really not that fun,” he said one day. “They hit you if you get anything wrong.”

“I’m not going to get anything wrong,” Gael said.

“Well, it’s not something you can always help.”

“ _I_ could.”

 

Gael was ninety days away from her first day of school when the Langdons came to visit. Visits from wealthy donors to the home were common, but Gael knew that something was special about the Langdons when she was told to fix her hair. All the children at the orphanage were somewhat wild-looking, but Gael’s hair was perhaps the wildest of them all. It was dark brown, almost black, thick, and curly. It was so difficult to maintain that the caretakers had long ago given up and allowed Gael to let her hair grow into a mass of tangles—like the matted fur of a feral dog or, if one were feeling more generous, the knotted roots of an old tree.

So, when Gael was told to make herself look “half-way presentable” and “do something about that hair,” she wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed. She reached her hands up to her hair and started trying to pull the knots apart with her fingernails.

“Amsterdam,” Mrs. Crook, the head girls’ caretaker, said, “Help your sister, would you?”

“With what?” Amsterdam asked.

Grooming implements were always in short supply.

“Don’t answer back to me,” Mrs. Crook said.

Amsterdam shrugged his shoulders and began pulling—hard—at the left side of Gael’s head.

“Ow!” Gael yelled. “You’re hurting me.”

“There’s no way around it,” Amsterdam whispered. “Do you want to get us both in trouble?”

“Why are they even making us do this?” Gael asked.

“Rich folks like you to look nice.”

“Amsterdam, that really hurts!”

“Shut up,” Amsterdam said, fear creeping into the admonition as Earnshaw appeared in the room and stepped forward, looking dangerous.

“Give her to me,” Earnshaw said, grabbing Gael’s arm and pulling her away from Amsterdam.

Amsterdam grabbed hold of Gael’s other arm and pulled her back. “No. I’ll take care of it. You stay away from her.”

Earnshaw took hold of both of Gael’s arms and jerked her out of Amsterdam’s reach. He stood behind her and bent over her so she could feel his breath hot against her neck. Then he started pulling on her hair, much harder than Amsterdam had, even though Gael hadn’t thought that possible.

“Stop!” Amsterdam yelled, but Earnshaw called for one of the older boys to come and hold Amsterdam back and the older boy obliged, punching Amsterdam in the stomach for good measure before placing him in a headlock.

Gael nearly fell as Earnshaw yanked a chunk of hair out of her head, causing blotches of red to float in the corners of her vision. She cried profusely, but tried not to scream, knowing that each sound she made would draw a similar one from Amsterdam and that any sound he made would draw an additional punch. By the time Earnshaw was finished, Gael’s head was bleeding and she had a patch of very thin hair on the lower left side of her head, which Mrs. Crook tried—mostly successfully—to cover with another layer of Gael’s hair. As she did this, Gael let out an involuntary yelp at the feeling of a hand brushing against her battered scalp.

The other children had already been gathered together by the staff and had become even more compact as they all came closer to witness the drama unfolding between Gael and Earnshaw—most of them seemed to feel bad for Gael, but a few were clearly enjoying the show—so it was easy for their minders to line them up in an orderly fashion—they had all just seen what happened to anyone who dared to be disorderly—in time for the Langdons and their two young daughters to stroll in. Both girls had light brown hair, curled in perfect ringlets. The taller one, dressed in a full-skirted, pink dress, bounded toward the line of children confidently, while the younger one, dressed in a ruffled blue dress, hung back, holding onto her mother’s hand. The mother’s skirt was even wider—Gael thought she looked ridiculous—and she wore her hair tied back under a white, frilly bonnet. Her face was crinkled as if she had just smelled something foul. Mr. Langdon looked equally imperious. He was tall and wore a long hat that made him look even taller, but, even though he had a moustache, his face was beautiful and soft like a woman’s. So were his hands, in one of which he held a cane, even though he didn’t seem to need it for walking.

“Don’t let these people see you cry,” Amsterdam whispered in Gael’s ear.

Gael knew that Amsterdam meant for her to stop crying all together, but she couldn’t seem to do that so she just nodded and bowed her head so her tears were less visible to their visitors. She watched the family’s shoes walk down the line, examining the children on display. Then her view was blocked by a small, very white face. It was the younger Langdon daughter tilting her head down and to the side in order to get a better look at Gael.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“She’s fine,” Amsterdam hissed, sending the girl scurrying back to her mother.

Gael lifted her head slightly, wiping away the tears that were still falling. Earnshaw and Mrs. Crook were walking the visitors down the line, listing off the many great causes the Langdon’s money was going towards. Gael had never even heard of some of the items they mentioned—such as sanitation—and knew they were lying about most of them. When they finished with their lies, Mr. Langdon nodded and said several approving words, before turning to lead his family away to another part of the home. Before they could leave, however, the younger Langdon daughter returned and handed Gael a piece of paper wrapped around what felt like several little balls.

“Don’t be sad,” she whispered, retreating to her mother’s side.

Gael appreciated the quietness of the girl’s kindness, but grimaced when she realized it had attracted the attention of the rest of the family.

“What was that?” Mrs. Langdon asked. “Did she take something from you?”

“No. I gave it to her.”

Mrs. Langdon took a step toward Gael. Gael had been accused of stealing—both rightfully and wrongly—and been stolen from enough times to know that she needed to hide the paper before anyone else saw it. Unsure where to put it, she made due with just holding her hands behind her back.

“What’s your name?” Mrs. Langdon asked.

Gael knew nothing good could come from this and bowed her head again, staring down at her own bare feet.

“Mrs. Langdon asked you a question,” Mrs. Crook snapped, stomping over and pulling Gael’s chin up.

“Gael.”

“It’s Abigail,” Mrs. Crook said, quickly.

“No it’s not,” Amsterdam said.

Mrs. Crook gave him a perilous look, but Mrs. Langdon didn’t seem to mind. As soon as Gael had lifted her head, Mrs. Langdon’s face had softened.

“Oh my,” she said, beckoning for her husband to come over. “She’s precious.”

Her older daughter beat her husband to it, though, sticking her face in Gael’s in a much more intrusive way than the younger daughter had. Her eyes glimmered as she smiled widely. Gael wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about until she remembered what Amsterdam had once told her about rich people. He had said they loved suffering, as long as it was not too dirty. With this thought in her head, Gael was finally able to stop crying. The damage had already been done, however.

“She’s beautiful,” the older Langdon daughter said. “Can we bring her home with us?”

“No, you can’t bring her home with you,” Amsterdam said.

The girl ignored him. “Please, can we, Papa?”

“I said no,” Amsterdam repeated, stepping out in front of Gael and pushing the Langdon girl away, hard enough that she fell to the ground and began to weep—more than Gael thought a girl of her size and age should have.

“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Crook said, rushing forward. “Mr. and Mrs. Langdon, we’ll deal with him, I assure you.”

And with that, whatever spell Gael had cast was broken. The Langdon parents left in fury, their daughters in tow, the younger one looking over her shoulder one last time, an apology in her eyes. Almost immediately, Earnshaw was holding Amsterdam’s arm in a pincer-like grip and yelling directly into his ear things like, “Do you know what you just did?” and “You’re going to regret that, boy.” Then, Amsterdam and Earnshaw were gone and all Gael could hear was the sound of the whip as it cracked against Amsterdam’s back. After a few minutes, she could also hear the heavy breathing and cursing of Earnshaw as he thrust his entire body into each blow. Gael knew that Earnshaw would continue until Amsterdam screamed and she also knew that Amsterdam was too proud to do so—at least at first. He always broke eventually, but with each year, it took longer and longer. Gael was not sure this was a good thing. After what felt like ages, Gael finally heard Amsterdam whimper softly. Then, as the lashing continued, he let out a terrifying, high-pitched scream. There were five more lashes after that and then Earnshaw stopped, walking back into the room where all the children were still waiting, leaving a gasping Amsterdam in the other room. Gael wanted to cry now more than ever but stopped herself, convinced that her tears were what had gotten them into this mess in the first place.

Amsterdam was not allowed to eat dinner with them that evening and when Gael asked if she could bring him some bread, she was told to shut her mouth and stop asking questions. While Mrs. Crook was looking the other way, Gael shoved her dinner bread up her sleeve to take to Amsterdam later. That night, she lay in bed, waiting until the caretakers all went to sleep and she could sneak into the boys’ dormitory and find Amsterdam. She turned the paper package the Langdon girl had given her over in her hands, studying it. As she peeled the paper away, four yellow balls fell into her hand, each one covered in thick, powdery sugar. They were clearly a candy of some sort, but Gael had had very little candy in her five—almost six—years of life and didn’t recognize these. She popped one into her mouth. It was more sour than she expected, but also sweet, delightfully so. She felt her stomach rumbling—all she had eaten for dinner was a watery, mercifully flavorless, green soup—and willed herself not to bite down on the hard candy. Folding the package back up and placing it in her sleeve with the bread, she crept out of bed toward the boys’ dormitory, where she found Amsterdam in a bed in the corner, his face to the wall.

“Hi,” she said, climbing into bed next to him.

“Hey,” Amsterdam responded without turning to look at her. His voice was shaky and Gael could tell he had been crying.

“I brought you something.”

She pulled the bread out and handed it to Amsterdam, who broke it in half and handed her a piece over his shoulder, still refusing to look at her.

“Thanks,” he said.

Gael knew she should have told Amsterdam to take all the bread, but she was so hungry, she couldn’t help but be glad at his decision to share.

“I have something else,” she said, dropping a piece of candy into the hand that Amsterdam had stuck out in response to this.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s from the Langdons.”

“I don’t want anything of theirs.”

“It’s really good.”

“I don’t care.”

Amsterdam groaned as he gingerly maneuvered his body so he was finally facing Gael. He sniffled slightly and wiped his red-ringed eyes. “They’re not going to take you away. I won’t let them.”

“I know,” Gael said, laying her head on the pillow next to her brother and closing her eyes.

But Gael was wrong. A week later, the Langdons returned and asked to see her again. They inspected her like she was an animal, running their fingers through her hair, noting its unevenness, unaware of the violence that had caused it. They checked her teeth and noted their surprise at how white and healthy they looked. They asked her to walk the length of the room while they watched. They didn’t ask her any questions about herself, or whether she even wanted to leave the orphans’ home and come live with them. While her sister and parents poked and prodded Gael, the younger Langdon daughter stood in the back of the room, removing herself from the proceedings. Gael wanted to remind her that she was the one who had started all this and she couldn’t change that fact no matter how far back she stood.

When Gael told Amsterdam about the Langdons’ second visit, he started staying back from school in order to be there if they came again. So Amsterdam was with Gael the next day when the Langdons returned a third and final time, intent on taking her away with them.

“You can’t have her,” he said, standing in front of her.

“Now, young man, don’t you want a better life for your sister?” Mrs. Langdon asked.

Amsterdam crossed his arms and shook his head. When Mr. Langdon tried to reach around Amsterdam to get to Gael, Amsterdam threw his arms out to the sides, creating a wall between the Langdons and Gael. Gael, for her part, clung to the back of Amsterdam’s shirt and buried her face in it, terrified.

“Come now, Amsterdam, don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Crook said. She clearly knew that only Earnshaw’s particular brand of discipline could ever stop Amsterdam from doing something once he set his mind to it and that that type of discipline was not the kind they wanted to show to the benefactors of the school. Even if the Langdons accepted the beatings in theory, actually witnessing them was another matter. When Amsterdam didn’t react to Mrs. Crook’s entreaty, she said, “Amsterdam, stop that now.”

He didn’t.

When Earnshaw appeared and forcibly disentangled Gael from Amsterdam, holding her kicking and screaming in his arms, Amsterdam attacked Earnshaw, scratching at his face and even biting him. When Mr. Langdon pulled Amsterdam off Earnshaw, Amsterdam turned on Mr. Langdon and meted out the same punishment on him. Eventually, Earnshaw’s frustrations with the current goings-on must have overwhelmed his concern for the Langdons’ delicate sensibilities and after pulling Amsterdam up by the back of his shirt, he slapped him across the face and boxed him in the ears so hard Amsterdam fell back, stunned. Then he kicked Amsterdam in the head, knocking him unconscious. At this, Mrs. Langdon gasped but said nothing. She stayed silent as Earnshaw threw a wriggling Gael over his shoulder and brought her out to the Langdons’ waiting carriage. For the entirety of the ride to the Langdon residence, Mr. Langdon held Gael in his lap while she struggled to get free. At the residence, Gael had no time to take in the home’s tremendous—and perhaps even shameful—opulence. She immediately began calling out to the many people bustling around the grand house that she was being kidnapped, but, even though they clearly heard her, none of them seemed to care. They either ignored her or deferred to her captors. Gael was brought to a room on the second floor and forced to swallow some noxious liquid to “calm her down.” Then she was drifting off to sleep, still writhing back and forth as she saw Amsterdam lying slumped on the floor, knowing that that would be the last way she’d ever see him.

On this point, Gael was also wrong. During her first month at the Langdons’ she ran away four times, seeing Amsterdam four times more. Each time, she was caught and brought back to what everyone insisted was now her home and each time, Amsterdam looked worse and worse. When Earnshaw gleefully told her that every time she ran back to the orphan’s home, Amsterdam was the one who was punished, she stopped trying to get back there. She did not, however, channel her former escaping energies into adjusting to her new life with the Langdons. Instead, she turned her attentions toward making herself so unpleasant to be around that the Langdons would be forced to return her. She threw any food she was given, she bit people, she screamed constantly but refused to speak any real words. When she heard the governess complain that she was too dirty to be allowed inside and probably had lice, she ran from bedroom to bedroom, rolling around in the Langdons’ perfect sheets, trying to show them just how dirty she could be. The governess was right. Gael did have lice and soon the whole household had lice as well. But the Langdons dealt with this and all her other behaviors, sighing mightily before handing her over to one of the many people they paid to handle their various messes.

Eventually, Gael did adjust to her new life, in spite of herself. Nothing she did to fight it worked so she gave up and began enjoying the comforts this new life offered. Her clothes were much more restrictive now, but they were also made of a less itchy fabric and she never found bugs crawling inside of them—not after the lice fiasco was under control. She could eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, often making herself sick from so much feasting. While she gradually realized that she didn’t need to eat constantly just because she could, she never let go of that feeling of scarcity and always cleared her plate fully at every meal, a practice that seemed reasonable to her, but that others found distinctly unladylike.  

Slowly, the Langdons adjusted to Gael as well. They tried to reform her as much as they could, to mold her in their own image, and succeeded in many ways. It didn’t seem appropriate to christen her with the same surname as the rest of the family—she was more of a ward than a third daughter—but it also seemed unwise for her to go on sharing a last name with her Irish ruffian brother, let alone their deceased father, who the Langdons had been told was the leader of a rather vulgar gang. And so, Gael Vallon was renamed Abigail Lee, Aba for short, the Lee part borrowed from the protagonist, Lucy Lee, of the Catherine Maria Sedgwick novel Mrs. Langdon had been reading at the time, a wonderful book encouraging the more humane treatment of domestic servants that had made Mrs. Langdon far more sympathetic to the plight of the lower classes and therefore more understanding of Gael—now Aba—and her many eccentricities.


	2. Chapter 2

1863

 

“Excuse me,” Aba said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I was just tidying up, Miss.”

While the woman was dressed in the typical black and white of a maid’s uniform, Aba had never seen her in the house before and none of the many Langdon servants called her “Miss.” The ones who had been there for years, since before Aba herself had been there, and therefore knew her when she was a child—and a rather unruly one at that—called her Aba, mostly out of affection, although some used it derisively as a way to remind her that she was not truly one of the Langdon daughters and was therefore not so far above them, or perhaps not truly above them at all. The newer servants called her Miss Lee, to differentiate her from the two Misses Langdon—although the older Miss Langdon had recently become Mrs. Wentworth—whom they called Miss Genevieve and Miss Isabella. Then there was one servant her own age, the stagecoach driver and general carer of the horses, Michael—her best friend aside from Isabella—who called her Miss Aba, a name that signified a peculiar combination of respect and intimacy.

Thus, of all the various forms of address Aba was accustomed to, Miss was not one of them and, in addition to this woman’s ignorance of the intricacies of Aba’s many names, Aba had also seen her shove a golden candlestick into the folds of her dress.

“All right,” Aba said. “What else have you taken?”

“Pardon me, Miss?”

The woman had the same slight, undifferentiated Irish accent as Michael, the accent of a person who had come to America long ago but spent enough time amongst her fellow immigrants to retain an old lilt. It was the same accent Aba had had as a child—until Mrs. Langdon forced her into elocution lessons and she lost it—and was very different from the specifically and distinctly Connemara accent of the home’s cook, Mrs. Connell.

“I know you’ve taken a candlestick. I’d like to know what else.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss.”

“I think you do.”

The woman paused, sighed heavily, and then reached into the folds of her dress, pulling out the candlestick and setting it down on the table with a thud.

“All right then,” Aba said. “What else?”

“I don’t have anything else,” the woman said, the politeness in her voice gone, along with the “Miss.”

Aba crossed her arms in front of her. “I don’t believe you. Come on. Empty your pockets. And don’t pull a knife on me, either. This is my house and threatening me in it would be a bad move.”

The woman finally obliged, pulling out Mrs. Langdon’s gold bracelet, sapphire earrings, and purple brooch made of diamonds, sapphires, and garnets.

“I’ll take those,” Aba said.

Then the woman pulled out a ruby brooch of Aba’s that Aba liked, but certainly didn’t need, and an old silver bracelet that belonged to Genevieve but that she had been careless enough to leave behind when she moved down the road to live with her new husband.

“You can keep those,” Aba said.

“Excuse me?”

“The brooch belongs to me, the bracelet to someone who won’t miss it. You can have them.”

“Why?” The woman narrowed her eyes.

“Do you have children?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“If you’re supporting your children this way, then I would understand. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of that.”

“I don’t care whether you understand or not. You don’t get to pass judgement on me just because you have money.”

“Fine, but you can keep the brooch and bracelet anyway.”

“I don’t need your charity,” the woman said, slamming the jewelry into Aba’s hand, pricking her with the brooch’s pin in the process.

“Very well,” Aba said. “Would you unbutton your collar for me? I imagine you’re hiding some necklaces underneath it.”

When the woman didn’t move to do so, Aba said, “Would you like me to call for Mr. Langdon? I can’t imagine he’ll be as forgiving as I am.”

“Yes,” the woman said, undoing her buttons. “You’ve been very Christian.”

She pulled her collar open, revealing at least twenty necklaces hung around her neck. Some of them could have belonged to Mrs. Langdon or Isabella, but if they didn’t wear them enough for Aba to recognize them, she figured they’d be no great loss. There was only one necklace that concerned her—a heart-shaped, pewter locket that Mrs. Connell had given Aba shortly after Aba came to live there.

“It’s for putting pictures in,” she had said. “Of the people you miss.”

Aba didn’t have any pictures of the people she missed, or any pictures of anyone for that matter, so she had instead written the name Amsterdam on a piece of paper, folded it up and stuck it in the locket. She had worn it every day until Genevieve told her it was ugly and then she had mostly kept it hidden in a drawer in her room, taking it out to hold on nights when she was feeling restless.  

“I need that locket,” Aba said.

After the woman handed it to her, Aba knew that their transaction was finished and she no longer needed to act so commanding in order to get this woman to comply with her requests. She could afford to soften a little.

“Would you like some food before you leave?” she asked.

The woman merely scoffed and shook her head, brushing past Aba and leaving out the back door. Aba shrugged. She had obviously been dealing with an excessively proud woman—the last thief she apprehended, the one with the knife, had stayed for some bread and a cup of tea with sugar. Aba ran upstairs where she snuck into Mrs. Langdon’s room—she didn’t want any of the Langdons knowing about the thief as she knew they’d want to have her arrested—and returned the jewels to their rightful places, then walked down to the basement kitchen, where she found Mrs. Connell preparing the noon lunch while Michael stood in the corner, chatting with her.

“I caught another girl trying to rob the house,” Aba said. “Dressed as a maid again.”

Mrs. Connell shook her head. “Good you spotted her. These fancy ladies and gentlemen wouldn’t even know a thief from staff. To think I could spend my whole life working for them, they’d see me on the street, wouldn’t even know who I was. I’m glad you’re different.”

“Of course she’s different,” Michael said. “Miss Aba’s no lady.”

“She’s more of a lady than you’ll ever be,” Mrs. Connell said, gesturing to Michael with a large wooden spoon.

“I certainly hope so,” Michael said.

“You know what I mean. She’s fancier than you’ll ever be.”

As if to prove Mrs. Connell wrong, Aba had spotted a basket of apples and taken one, biting into it with a loud crunch.

“Aba,” Mrs. Connell said wearily. “It’s almost time for luncheon. You don’t need to be eating anymore right now. You already ate me out of all my porridge this morning. Besides, I’m saving those for a pie.”

“Sorry,” Aba said, trying to hand the apple back to Mrs. Connell.

“I can’t use it now.”

“No one will know.”

“I’ll know.”

“Fine,” Aba said, taking a few more bites, before passing the apple to Michael, who heartily bit into it. “See, he doesn’t mind.”

“Ah, don’t you know, Miss Aba. That’s because I’m not fancy like you.”

Aba rolled her eyes.

“Mrs. Connell,” she said. “Mr. Langdon is taking us down to the Five Points after lunch and I was hoping to pack a basket, hand out some food. Would that be all right?”

Aba knew that Mrs. Connell did not like Aba using her kitchen as some sort of food dispensary for the poor, but she also knew that Mrs. Connell found it hard to say no to her and that she had far more sympathy for the men, women, and children of the Points than she let on. “If they truly wanted to better themselves, they’d get a job in service,” she’d always say, but Aba knew that Mrs. Connell regularly donated a portion of her weekly pay to the Christian Women’s Charitable Organization in order to support programs in the Points, an even more remarkable act, given Mrs. Connell’s devout Catholicism and the Protestant allegiance of the Christian Women.

“Yes,” Mrs. Connell said. “Fine. You can use up all my stores and make life harder for me if you truly wish. Who am I to say now?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Connell.”

“I don’t know if your charity’s as appreciated as you may think,” Michael said.

“Why not?”

“Well, you’re only feeding them for a day, aren’t you?”

“I know what it’s like to be hungry,” Aba said. “A day could make all the difference.”

“And I know what it’s like to survive off food from another man’s table.”

“As do I.”

Aba was always aware of her status as a not-quite-Langdon.

“Ah, but it’s more your table than mine, Miss Aba.”

With that, Michael winked at her and exited the kitchen.

 

“Our Aba came from a place much like this,” Mr. Langdon said, as Isabella and Aba shared knowing looks. Mr. Langdon always said this whenever they toured the Fives Points, or other “poverty-stricken” areas like it. It was, in some ways, his way of calling attention to the good he and his wife had done by plucking a young, deprived girl from her heinous surroundings and raising her to be an at least passable member of the New York aristocracy. In other ways, though, Aba recognized his comments as a way of expressing pride in his more-than-a-ward-not-quite-a-daughter. He was always reminding her how far she had come, noting her elegance, her wit, her ability to make conversation with almost anyone—the closest a woman of the higher classes could ever come to being complimented on her intelligence. “And look at her now,” Mr. Langdon said.

“Aye, she’s quite the woman,” said their police escort, Constable Jack Mulraney.

Aba and Mulraney had met several times before, but he was always too interested in the actual Langdon daughters to pay any attention to her, which Aba found agreeable enough.

Aba never fully understood the point of these poverty tours. Mr. Langdon said it was important to know how the poor lived, but Aba thought that one visit was probably enough to acquaint them with the realities of the urban poor. The situation never seemed to change between their visits. It was not that she minded being in the Points necessarily, but more that she felt she didn’t really have the right to be there. It reminded her of when rich people, such as the Langdons, would visit the orphan’s home, cooing over their deprivation. Most of what she remembered from the home was hazy—hunger, fear, misery, perhaps some happiness with her brother, she wasn’t sure—but these visits were clear to her and not just because they resulted in her eventual departure from the home. They were clear because of the immense shame she felt, even as a small child, at being gawked at. Now she was the gawker, standing on the other side of the glass at the exhibit. She brought bread to distribute because she knew how hungry many of the people were, but she also brought it so she would have something to do other than stare. The whole practice reminded her of something someone had told her once, that rich people loved suffering, as long as it was not too dirty. Aba had to admit her visits with the Langdons had not done much to disprove this. The Five Points was so dirty and foul smelling, that Mrs. Langdon always had to spend the rest of the day after a Points tour lying in bed with a jar of smelling salts pressed to her nose.

Now, Mrs. Langdon walked alongside the constable and her husband, her distaste for the Points evident on her face. She never could hide that kind of thing, or maybe she never even tried. Aba and Isabella, meanwhile, hung back, handing out bread and grapes to the many children who ran toward them with hands outstretched. No adults approached them, preferring to watch from a distance, their arms crossed. Meeting the gaze of a sunken-eyed woman holding a baby to her breast, Aba remembered Michael’s comment about surviving off food from someone else’s table and quickly looked away. She was crouching down to talk to a particularly sallow-faced child when a pair of yellow, blue, and red checked pants appeared in front of her and the child scampered off.

“What do we have here?” the pants asked. “A missionary delegation?”

Aba looked up to see a tall man wearing a long, red coat and a brown top hat. He had a large, well-coifed mustache and hair that ended just below his ears. There was something strange about the blueness of his left eye, as if he were missing a pupil. Aba found the man unnerving and took a step back, placing a hand on Isabella’s shoulder as a silent instruction to do the same.

“We’re just visiting,” Aba said.

“Visiting friends no doubt.”

While the man was clearly mocking the presumption of them even being there in the first place, he didn’t seem to want them to leave—or at least not Isabella.

“You’re a very pretty girl, you know that?” he said to Isabella, taking her gloved hand and kissing it.

Aba would have recoiled in horror, but Isabella responded with pleasure and at least feigned surprise, the same way she always responded to male attention, something that bothered Aba as men had been calling Isabella pretty since she was a child and Isabella should have been used to it by now.

As the man, Mr. William Cutting he said, introduced himself to not just Isabella, but also Mr. and Mrs. Langdon, who had doubled back when they realized their girls were no longer with them, Aba, found herself distracted by one of the men standing behind Mr. Cutting. He was wearing his cap pulled low over his face so Aba could barely see his eyes but there was something familiar about them, as there was with the way he held his mouth—straight and tight, the facial equivalent of a clenched fist.

“It seems Miss Lee is no longer with us,” Mr. Cutting said, pulling Aba’s attention back to the man directly in front of her. “And just as I was having such a lovely conversation with your lovely family.”

“I apologize,” Aba muttered, trying to get another glance at the strangely familiar man.

“And there you go again,” Mr. Cutting said. “Now is this any way to treat a kindred spirit? I’m a charitable person, same as you, out here doing my best for the good men and women of the Points.”

“Is that so?”

“It is. And I even live here.”

Aba looked from side to side. Mr. and Mrs. Langdon looked uncomfortable, but they had been trained in the best ballrooms, parlor rooms, and smoking rooms in the city not to ruffle any feathers and never to insult an acquaintance who might later whisper some unpleasantness to the rest of their social circle and were therefore paralyzed by their desire to be polite, even in the face of vulgarity, powerless to extricate themselves from this unpleasant situation. Meanwhile, the way Isabella was looking at Mr. Cutting, it didn’t seem like she wanted to extricate herself. Aba wanted to tell her that she needn’t rely on Mr. Cutting for compliments, that another would likely be arriving within the hour.

“Yes, well, we should be going,” Aba said, leading her cohort away.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cutting,” Isabella said before leaving.

“And you, my dear.” Mr. Cutting took his hat off and dramatically tipped it toward Isabella, revealing the greasy hair that lay beneath it.

As they walked away, Aba looked over her shoulder to take one last look at the man in the cap.

“What’s wrong?” Isabella asked her moments later.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve been very quiet.”

Aba decided not to tell Isabella that she had found her friendliness toward Mr. Cutting deeply unsettling or that she was perpetually frustrated by how useless the Langdons and their preoccupation with maintaining appearances were as soon as they left the confines of the wealthy world they had created for themselves. Instead she said, “One of the men back there with Mr. Cutting looked familiar to me but I can’t place him.”

“Perhaps we could ask Mr. Cutting his name.”

“No,” Aba said. “I’d prefer not to speak to that man ever again.”

“Oh, come on, Aba. Sometimes I think you’re just as stuck up as Genevieve.”

Genevieve had never liked their trips to the Points and had started refusing to come early on. When it came to Aba, Genevieve had been similarly dismissive, refusing any association with her throughout childhood and adolescence. Despite the fact that the initial entreaties to take Aba home had come from Genevieve, she had quickly tired of her new plaything and Aba had grown up to view Isabella—less than a year younger than her—as a sister and confidante and Genevieve—two years older—as a mistress and tyrant, who ignored her on better days and ordered her about on worse ones. Any comparison between Aba and Genevieve was baseless and somewhat cruel and Isabella must have known this.

“I’m not stuck up,” Aba said. “There’s a difference between disliking poverty and disliking coarseness. That man was clearly not poor. Just look at that garish outfit. Besides, your parents didn’t like him either.”

“My parents are stuck up as well.”

Aba couldn’t argue with that.

“You just like him because he said you were pretty.”

“No. I liked him because he was a self-made man. If he grew up here and can now afford to dress up like that, he’s certainly done something right. Who can blame him for being a bit coarse? Imagine if you hadn’t come to live with us. Don’t you think you’d be coarse as well? I mean, when you came to live with us, you were coarse.”

“Not like him.”

“Aba, you used to spit on me.”

This was true, but Aba had stopped this behavior within six months of her arrival at the Langdon residence, after which she had been exceedingly gentle with Isabella, knowing that she was shy and often overshadowed and cowed by her older sister.

“Yes, well, I was a child. And it’s not that Mr. Cutting lacks high class manners. It’s more than that. There was just something not right about him. Something repugnant.”

“Oh please. Don’t be so prejudiced, Aba. So, he was a bit aggressive. You’d have to be to make it in a place like this.”

Aba thought she knew more about making it in places like the Five Points than Isabella did but decided not to argue. Perhaps she was a bit prejudiced. She had found Mr. Cutting unpleasant on his own merits. That she was sure of. But she had found him repugnant for less easily explicable reasons. He reminded her of a villain from her childhood. Not Earnshaw. He was another clear memory from the orphan’s home and was fully enough realized in her imagination—and her nightmares—that she could never mistake someone else for him. No, Mr. Cutting reminded her of a villain of lore, perhaps of the stories her brother used to tell her—about Saint Patrick casting the snakes out of Ireland and then coming to New York to fight its evils, about men as tall as buildings who fought bears and lived, about the cowards who killed these types of men through dishonorable means.

That night, Aba paced around her room in an agitated state, trying to figure out how she knew the man in the cap and whether this was related to her sense of far more menacing familiarity with regard to Mr. Cutting. After the thief of the morning had tried to steal her locket, Aba had fastened it around her neck, wearing it for the first time in years. Now, she took it off and held it tightly in her hands, half-believing if she squeezed it firmly enough it would open up and reveal its answers to her. This, of course, was ridiculous. The locket was not imbued with any more meaning or wisdom than what Aba had given it, was merely a metal receptacle for the name of a person she’d never see again.

She fell asleep that night clutching the locket and dreaming of giants, bears, and devils.


	3. Chapter 3

For the next week, Aba couldn’t keep the face of the man in the cap out of her thoughts, not that she tried very hard. He was so familiar, too familiar for it to all be in her head. And if she remembered him from her childhood, after all these years, he must have been important.

During dinner conversation about the justness of the conscription act—Aba disapproved of the stipulation that allowed men to buy their way out, while Mr. Langdon was against the entire concept of a draft and Mrs. Langdon and Isabella both claimed not to hold much of an opinion on the issue—Aba would find herself drifting off, trying to reconstruct the image of the man in her mind. When Aba and Isabella secretly staged scenes from _Wuthering Heights_ —a banned book in their household that they had somehow gotten their hands on as children and maintained an obsession with even after they grew too old to be acting out the passions of Heathcliff and Cathy—Aba was easily distracted and often forgot her lines. When they reread the book together—for perhaps the twentieth time—she took twice as long to read as Isabella did, forcing Isabella to wait for her before each page turn. When Aba finally decided to take some decisive action, she was so excited she snapped the book shut without paying any heed to the fact that Isabella was still reading.

“Aba, what are you doing?”

“I think we need to go back to the Five Points.”

“I’m sure Father will drag us there again before the year is out.”

“No, I mean now.”

“Why?”

“I knew that man, Isabella. I’m sure of it.”

“What man?”

“The one in the cap, standing behind Mr. Cutting.”

“How could you possibly know anyone from the Five Points?”

“From when I was young maybe, in the orphans’ home.”

“You can’t go back there alone.”

“That’s why I said _we_ need to go back.”

Isabella’s eyes widened as she shook her head ever so slightly. This was her way of saying that she didn’t want to go along with whatever plan Aba was cooking up, but that she would, in the end. Isabella had been wordlessly protesting Aba’s ideas like this for as long as Aba could remember.

“I suppose we could bring Michael with us,” Isabella said.

“No. He doesn’t like it there.”

While Aba had spent the first five years of her life in a place much like the Five Points, Michael had spent the first eleven years of his life actually in the Five Points, being used and abused by various adults—some of whom might have been his parents, although Aba could never get a straight answer on this subject. One day it must have become too much for him, and he had wandered up to Fifth Avenue and collapsed in the Langdon’s doorway. After that, Mrs. Connell took him in and busied him with odd jobs around the house until he showed an affinity for horses and was officially hired by the Langdons at the age of fourteen. He had not set foot within the Five Points since. During the family’s visits to the Points, he always insisted on parking the carriage a full two blocks away, telling the Langdons it would be better for them if the area’s many thieves did not see their method of transportation, as if the carriage was the only sign of their immense wealth.

“Well,” Isabella began somewhat hesitantly. “Michael’s a driver. He can’t exactly decide where he will and will not go.”

“Yes, he absolutely can.”

It was only recently that Michael had stopped holding his breath every time the Points were mentioned and Aba would never make him go back there. Instead, she proposed they take the streetcar and go the following day when Mrs. Langdon would be meeting with other society ladies to discuss how to handle the influx of nouveau riche families created by the recent industrial boom while Mr. Langdon, who had expanded upon his vast inheritance with investments in textiles spun from southern cotton, met with the patriarchs of those same families to discuss the war’s effects on their industries. No one would be home to ask them where they were going.

Throughout the rest of that day, Isabella grew increasingly nervous.

“If Michael’s not coming with us, I’m not sure we should go.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“It’s a dangerous place, Aba.”

“We’ll be careful.”

“Why is this so important to you anyway?”

Aba sighed and told Isabella what she had, until now, refused to admit even to herself.

“I think the man I saw might have been Amsterdam.”

“Really?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. But then again, if he’s my brother, shouldn’t I know right away?”

“It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, but my brother. I should be able to recognize my own brother. If I couldn’t… that just wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be right.”

“It wouldn’t be your fault.”

“That’s why it probably wasn’t him, you know. Because if he were my brother, I’d know. Right away, I’d know. So it’s probably not him.”

“But you want to know for sure.”

“Just to put my doubts to rest.”

“Of course,” Isabella said, breathing in deeply. She seemed to be dredging up reserves of courage. “Of course, we’ll go then.”

“Thank you.”

As a child, Aba believed that if she ever met her brother again, she would recognize him immediately. She knew that appearances changed as people grew older and even accepted that memory could be unreliable and foggy at times, but she always assumed that there was something special about kinship, about blood, that would act as a sort of beacon. If the blood running through her veins was the same as the blood running through Amsterdam’s that would have to connect them in some way, draw them toward one another instinctively. But, if the man she had seen was Amsterdam and she had not known him, that would call all her notions about the strength of blood and kinship into question.

After breakfast on the morning of their planned visit, Isabella took Aba aside and, her face red with embarrassment, told her that she didn’t have money for the streetcar fare. “Perhaps we could walk.”

It was a strange paradox that the daughters of the richest men in the city never had any money of their own. Then again, they never needed it. They hardly ever went anywhere unchaperoned and, if they did, it was only to irreproachably respectable places that would of course accept credit from the young miss. They knew her family was good for it.

Aba, on the other hand, did have money. When she was young, Mrs. Connell had told her that girls like her needed their own reserves.

“Your way isn’t as certain as Miss Genevieve or Miss Isabella, you understand?”

For a while, Mrs. Connell had paid Aba out of her own cash reserves, sending her on probably unnecessary errands in order to justify giving her some money every few weeks. When Aba got older, she realized how ridiculous it was for her, the ward of a rich family whose every need—for now at least—was provided for, to take money from Mrs. Connell, a cook who sent most of her wages back to Connemara to help care for her sister’s children. She asked Mrs. Connell if there was a way for her to acquire a real job somehow, discreetly of course for she would never want to embarrass the Langdons by publicly advertising her involvement in the grubbiness of an exchange of goods and services. Mrs. Connell had found Aba sewing work, advertising with the kind of middle class families who couldn’t afford servants but didn’t necessarily want to do their own mending. She told Aba that families like the Langdons didn’t interact with the kind of people who contracted out such tasks instead of taking care of it in-house—or, more accurately, having their staff take care of it—and that there was therefore very little chance of her getting caught. Aba’s customers were instructed to wait at the back of the Langdon house where a maid would receive and return their clothing. Then, Aba would work late into the night, repairing torn seams, taking in waistlines, hemming. Initially, her work was shoddy at best, but she became better and better with each job and people continued sending items to her because she was cheap. By the time Aba was seventeen, she had been working for pay—without ever having to actually pay _for_ anything—for four years and had amassed a good deal of money.

“I can pay the fare,” she said to Isabella. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

Aba led Isabella upstairs, made her swear not to tell another living soul of what she was about to show her, and then shimmied under her bed, returning with a large metal box that she kept under a loose floorboard. Perhaps, loosened was the more appropriate term as homes like the Langdons’ didn’t have any loose floorboards. Michael and Aba had had to pull up this one using a crowbar before setting it back down on top of Aba’s growing collection of coins.

“I’ve been taking in sewing,” Aba said, opening the box to show row upon row of neatly arranged coinage.

“You’ve been what?”

“Taking in sewing. A maid takes it from the families so no one knows it’s me and then I do it at night.”

“Why?”

“For the money.” This seemed obvious to Aba.

“But you don’t need money.”

“Maybe not now, but later.”

Isabella smiled and lifted her eyebrows as if Aba were being extremely silly. “Well, that’s what marriage is for.”

Aba considered pointing out the vast difference between Isabella’s marriage prospects and her own but decided not to, not wanting to make Isabella uncomfortable. “It’s good to be careful,” she said.

“All right then,” Isabella said, still looking at Aba as if she were an oddity. Then she continued in a whisper, even though no one else was around to overhear, “How long have you been doing this?”

“Since I was thirteen. Now, come on, we have to get going.”

Aba took out fifty cents—more than they’d need—from the box and deposited the coins in a small, black purse. When Isabella held out her hand for her portion of the fare, Aba shook her head. Isabella wasn’t used to carrying money and Aba couldn’t rely on her not to lose it—or have it taken from her.

“Don’t you trust me, Aba?”

“This is just easier.”

Aba quickly dressed herself to leave and had to wait by the door for Isabella for quite some time. When Isabella finally appeared, she was wearing a fully-hooped blue dress, bright green bonnet, black gloves, and an amethyst brooch.

“You can’t leave the house dressed like that,” Aba said.

“Why not? I always leave the house dressed like this.”

"Well, you’re not always visiting the Five Points without a police escort. You’ll have to dress in simpler clothes.”

“I don’t have simpler clothes.”

Aba sighed. “Fine, but take off the bonnet and brooch and leave your gloves here.”

“My gloves? But Aba, it’s so dirty there.”

“Then don’t touch anything.”

On the streetcar, Aba quickly went from the de facto leader of their excursion to an anxious, fidgety mess.

“It’ll be fine,” Isabella said, taking one of Aba’s hands to stop her from constantly rubbing them together as she had been doing.

“Thank you for coming with me.”

“Of course.”

Isabella, naturally shy and usually more nervous of the outside world than Aba was, could be counted upon to open up in two specific scenarios. One was receiving male attention. The other was protecting Aba. Growing up, while Aba defended Isabella against the outrageously high expectations placed on her—that she sit perfectly still during lessons and mealtimes, that she be engaging when conversing with others of her social set but never too loud or knowledgeable, that she be beautiful but never act like she knew it—Isabella had defended Aba from the low expectations placed on her—assumptions of her stupidity, filthiness, and general unsuitability to inhabit the universe of the New York elite. After years of Aba’s persistent refusal to leave that universe, Aba was now half-accepted by most of its members and had grown a thick skin to handle the various slights thrown her way, but Isabella would still have to retrieve her from backrooms where she went to hide after a particularly vicious comment or quell her nerves before interactions with more prestigious members of society. Isabella had never made Aba face a challenge alone before and the search for this mysterious man would be no different.

“When we find him,” Isabella began.

“If we find him.”

“If we find him, I’ll stay back and let you speak to him privately, but I won’t be far.”

“Thank you.”

Aba had expected them to have to wait around the Points for a while before the man in the cap made an appearance, but as soon as they arrived, there he was, leaning against a building with a cigarette in his mouth.

“That’s him, isn’t it?” Isabella whispered in her ear.

“I think so,” Aba said. She was absolutely sure this was the man from before, but what she meant was that she was starting to believe this man really might be Amsterdam. If he was, she had no idea what would happen next or what she wanted to happen. It would likely change things that she didn’t want to change, such as her place within the Langdon household, but it would, of course, be worth it—so she believed, or wanted to at least.

“All right,” Aba said, facing Isabella. “You wait here, but if anyone gives you any trouble or if you feel unsafe at all, come get me, understand?”

“Aba, please. I can handle myself.”

“I know that,” Aba said, even though she didn’t. She nodded at Isabella nervously and then turned, beginning the walk toward this mysterious man. “Pardon me, sir,” she said, still about five feet away from the man.

He pointed to himself, looking surprised. His hat was not pushed down quite so low on his face today and Aba could see more of it. There was something about the way the man moved his eyebrows—not just vertically, but horizontally as well—that was familiar.

“Yes, you,” Aba said, taking a step closer and trying to keep her legs steady. “This is going to sound foolish, but, I… well, I think I know you from somewhere.”

“You don’t seem like the kinda person I’d know.”

“Maybe not now, but I grew up in an orphans’ home around here.”

“Did you now?” the man asked, eyeing her up and down. Aba had dressed in the plainest attire she owned but her clothing was still cleaner than that of anyone around her. “Looks like you’ve done quite well for yourself.”

“I was taken out when I was young.”

“Ah, so you didn’t actually grow up there, then?”

“I suppose not,” Aba said. She wasn’t sure where to go from here. The man was clearly enjoying making her look ridiculous. After a long pause, during which the man merely smirked at her, Aba blurted out, “Is your name Amsterdam? I have to… I have to know.”

The man stiffened. “I don’t see how that’s any business of yours.”

“Please. Please just tell me.”

“All right. Fine. It is.”

Aba’s knees collapsed beneath her and Amsterdam initially put a hand out to stabilize her but seemed to think better of it, pulling the hand back and leaning back against the wall. Aba was able to catch herself just before she hit the ground.

“Oh god,” Aba said. She raised her arms to hug Amsterdam but was parried away.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I…”

“I’d be careful coming too close to me with those fancy clothes. I might get them dirty.”

“Amsterdam, it’s me. Aba.” No, that wasn’t what she had been called back then. “Abigail.”

For a moment, Amsterdam stared at her, stunned. Then, his face settled back into a look of disinterest.

“Your sister,” Aba added.

“I don’t have a sister.”

Aba felt herself panicking. Had he forgotten her?

“No,” she said. “No, you do. We grew up in the orphans’ home on Blackwell together. You used to call me…” Aba knew, amongst the many different names she had amassed over the years, there was one that no one used anymore, but that Amsterdam had. One that was special, between just them. “You used to call me Gail.”

“I called you that because it was your name.”

“So you do remember me.”

“I remember someone named Gael.”

“Yes, well, that was what you called me when I was a child. For short.”

“Not for short,” Amsterdam said, straightening up to his full height. “That was your name. The name our father gave you.”

Aba hadn’t realized that. She knew living with the Langdons had changed her, that the Langdons had actively worked to change her—her wildness, her ignorance, her accent. She even knew her last name was made up, appropriately plucked from a book about a mistress’s interactions with her servants, with the lower classes. She had not known, however, that her first name had been changed as well, that her past had been erased so completely.

“I wasn’t aware,” she said. “But, I’m still Gail. I’m still that girl.”

“No—Aba did you say? No, Aba, I don’t think you are.”

Amsterdam leaned into the word Aba, spitting it out like a bad taste in his mouth. He was clearly angry with her, which did not seem fair to Aba. Not at all.

“I didn’t ask to be taken away,” she said.

“Seems it worked out for you, though.” Amsterdam again looked pointedly at the cleanliness of Aba’s clothes, the perfection of her hair, not a strand out of place.

“Yes,” Aba admitted. “And no also. I missed you. Always. Listen, are you angry with me? I didn’t ask for it. I was just a child. I didn’t want to leave.”

“You seem to have enjoyed it well enough.”

“But I never forgot you.”

“No? Tell me then, how long did it take before you stopped running away?”

Aba didn’t answer.

“A month,” Amsterdam said. “That’s how long it took you to forget me.”

“I didn’t forget. They were hurting you. Every time I did it, they were hurting you. And they always caught me.”

Amsterdam scoffed.

“So what should I have done?” Aba asked. “Just kept running away? Just kept doing this… this utterly futile thing that was getting you hurt?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Because it shows them you’re not one of them. That they haven’t broken you.”

“They didn’t break me.”

“Really? Looks to me like they did and in all too swift a fashion too.”

Aba lifted her hand in anger.

“You gonna slap me?” Amsterdam asked. “I guess that’s what you do when someone of my station talks back to you.”

“No,” Aba said, lowering her hand, but maintaining the edge in her voice. “No, I’m not going to slap you.” She stood there, trying to think of what to say next, feeling her eyes sting and her throat burn. Eventually, she decided there was nothing left to say and turned her back, walking away with as much decorum as she could muster.

“Tell me,” Amsterdam called after her. “Have they married you off yet?”

Aba spun around. “Excuse me?”

“I know how your lot sells their girls at your big parties.” Amsterdam spit. “It’s like selling cattle.”

Aba decided not to dignify this with a response and continued walking.

“Or are you tainted meat?” Amsterdam asked.

Before she knew what she was doing, Aba had marched back to Amsterdam and punched him hard in the face, causing him to stagger backward. Amsterdam lifted his hand to his check, touching the place where her fist had first made contact, and looked at her like she had just told a particularly bad, embarrassing joke. Aba breathed deeply and turned on her heel, feeling hot tears running down the bridge of her nose by the time she got to where Isabella stood waiting for her.

“Was it him?” she asked.

Aba shook her head. In many ways, it wasn’t.


	4. Chapter 4

The Langdons had agonized over the debuts of their two younger daughters for an entire year. According to custom, Aba, as the older of the two, should have debuted first, but it didn’t seem appropriate to hold a separate debut for Abigail Lee, a woman of uncertain parentage and generally disreputable lineage. Nor was it appropriate to ignore Aba entirely. They knew they had to do something for her. How on earth was a girl with such a family supposed to find a husband without a debut? Eventually, they settled on having Aba and Isabella debut at the same time, just a few months after Isabella’s sixteenth birthday and just weeks after Aba’s seventeenth. The next decision that had to be made was where to debut. The Astors held a ball every spring, but the Langdons could not be sure how such an old and prominent family would feel about having a ward make her first entrance into society at their gathering. On the other hand, they couldn’t subject Aba, let alone Isabella, to the indignity of debuting at the home of one of those new money types, people like the Paleys and Varnums. If worse came to worse, the men of those families would make adequate marriage material for Aba but there was no need to set expectations so low right from the start. And thus, it was decided, after much deliberation, that Aba and Isabella would debut at their own ball, one held at the Langdon residence, thereby avoiding any embarrassment for themselves or their friends.

While not privy to the decision making process, Aba was well aware of the difficulties it must have presented to the Langdons. In general, anything involving Aba and society presented the Langdons with difficulty, a fact about which Aba, as much as she appreciated and sometimes even loved the Langdons, could not muster much sympathy, not in the past and particularly not now.

After her meeting with Amsterdam a week earlier, Aba had retreated to her room, spending the next hour pacing around her room, kicking and punching various objects like the ruffian she was before collapsing on her bed in a crying heap like the delicate woman she also was, realizing for the first time just how much of an orphan the Langdons had made her. They would never be her true family. She would never call Mr. and Mrs. Langdon Father and Mother. This, she had accepted long ago, always thinking she had another, truer family out there waiting for her. Now, she knew, thanks to the Langdons’ intervention, she didn’t have that family anymore either, and, for the first time in years, her anger at being taken away eclipsed her gratitude for the life she had subsequently been offered.

With all this running through her head, Aba found it impossible to feign excitement over her upcoming debut. It was becoming increasingly difficult not to roll her eyes when Mrs. Langdon fretted about the guest list and the inconvenience of hiring extra servants for the night or when Isabella vacillated between dress options, asking Aba for advice as if the situation were one of life and death.

“They’re both nice,” Aba finally said. “You’ll look lovely in either of them because you always look lovely and men will tell you this no matter what you wear because they always tell you this, and I think there’s no sense in talking about it any longer.”

For a moment, Isabella looked profoundly hurt, her head tilted and mouth agape as if she had just been struck. Then her expression settled into one of mild annoyance, amusement even. “Oh, you’re no help at all,” she said, throwing her arms up in exasperation and shaking her head as one might when dealing with a particularly petulant child.

“Right,” Aba said. “I guess I’ll leave then.”

The knuckles on her right hand—the hand she had used to punch Amsterdam—still smarted and, as she walked through the halls of the grand house, she opened and closed her hand to try to make the feeling go away, to rid herself of the memory entirely. She knew she should not have spoken so harshly to Isabella, knew that what she should have felt was grateful, grateful that Isabella had agreed to accompany her to the Five Points, grateful that Isabella had been more of a sibling to her than Amsterdam ever had, grateful that, after they’d returned from the Points, Isabella had kept her distance, giving Aba the occasional concerned look but never asking her to explain herself or what had happened. But what Aba actually felt was anger. Anger that Isabella’s family—which was not Aba’s family no matter how much they all pretended—had plucked her away all those years ago without any thought for the rightness or wrongness of such an act. Anger that they had never ever apologized, never even acknowledged the hurt they had caused.

Of course, there was guilt too. Guilt over her lack of gratitude, over her anger, and, most of all perhaps, guilt over her debut, an opportunity to make a spectacle of herself and one the Langdons had spared no expense in obtaining. Aba, more aware of the disadvantaged life led by the rest of New York than any of the Langdons, had felt guilty all her life. Introduced to a life of affluence at a young, but not young enough age, she felt her life had been defined by guilt. And now she was being ushered into this world of wealth and carelessness as an adult, rather than a child, being forced to take even more ownership of the privileged, if tenuously grasped, life she led and with it, the accompanying shame. Aba found it hard to fathom that Isabella, with all her kindness, could visit the poverty of the Points one week and return home to fret over the appropriate ballgown the next. Didn’t their visits to the Points make Isabella realize how silly her life was? They certainly made Aba realize.

Without thinking, Aba wandered down to the courtyard behind the house, a dusty area for the staff to talk and smoke on breaks and the first place she always checked when looking for Michael. Of course, she realized as soon as she walked out the servant’s entrance to find the courtyard abandoned, Michael would not be there. As Mrs. Langdon was busying herself with the debut planning, visiting other grand families to consult, Michael was similarly busy, driving her from house to house.

Aba let out a long sigh and turned to her left, catching the painted eye of a rather disturbingly decorated flour sack resting atop a barrel. For about a year, Michael had been taking informal boxing lessons from their neighbors’ driver, practicing his sparring on flour sacks he had set up in the courtyard, giving each sack a face, red dots for eyes, a squiggly line for a mouth, blood trickling from various cuts and scratches.

“It’s so violent,” Aba had said when she first watched Michael pummeling one of his constructed foes.

“Yes,” he’d said matter-of-factly, as if this were the point.

Now Aba glared at the face on the sack, kicking the barrel hard enough to make the painted-on pugilist wobble on its perch. It felt good, even as it felt bad as well, made the toes on her right foot smart. She kicked again, this time knocking the flour sack off the barrel entirely. Then she picked it up, struggling under the weight, and set it back atop the barrel, at which point she sent her fist flying toward the face, right where the nose would have been had Michael bothered to include it. Aba grunted as she threw her whole weight behind the next punch, once again knocking the flour sack to the ground.

 “I think you got him,” a voice said from behind her.

Aba turned to see Michael standing in the doorway. “Hey,” she said, blowing a strand of hair out of her face, her hands on her hips. She was happy to see him but would have preferred he find her in a slightly more dignified position.

“What’s got your dander up?” he asked.

“No one,” Aba said, realizing too late that the less suspicious answer would have been, “Nothing.”

“No one?” Michael raised his eyebrows.

“No one,” Aba said as she leaned against another barrel, trying to look nonchalant. “No one and nothing. I’m fine.”

“All right,” Michael said, coming over to stand next to Aba. “I’ll believe you.”

“Yes, well, you should.”

“Hmm.”

“How’s driving Mrs. Langdon all over creation?” Aba asked.

“It’s fine. She’s got herself pretty frenzied about the big debut. But then again, everyone’s pretty frenzied about it, ‘cept for you of course.”

“I feel as if I’m being auctioned off like cattle.”

“Ah no,” Michael said. “I’ve been to an auction, to get horses for the carriage. It’s not at all the sort of thing your lot goes in for.”

Aba flinched at Michael’s use of the phrase “your lot.” It was just what Amsterdam had said to her in the Points.

“I bet it won’t be that bad,” Michael said. “And if it is, sure you can slip away to the kitchen and get drunk with me and the other commoners.”

Aba smiled but shook her head. She did not, as a rule, get drunk, perhaps the only area in which she was a perfect lady. She rarely hid in the kitchen during parties either, usually considering her discomfort trivial in comparison to the daily trials of the household staff and preferring to share her high society struggles with Isabella. It _all_ seemed trivial now—balls, parties, her life. For a week now, Aba had been nursing her anger toward Amsterdam, trying to cultivate fury as a safeguard against taking his words too strongly to heart. The first part, as evidenced by her work on the flour sack, was going well—she was very angry, nearly all the time—but, with regards to the latter part, she had been less successful. Lately, whenever Isabella spoke to her, she found herself thinking of “her lot” and the ridiculousness of the lives they led, so wrapped up in appearances and propriety and gowns and finding a “good match.” This only fed her anger at Amsterdam, his making her life, the one she had led for the past eleven years, feel foolish.

“Do you have siblings, Michael?” Aba asked after several minutes of silence. Despite knowing him for six years, she had never asked Michael this before, learning very early on in their friendship that it was kinder not to mention his past. Now, however, she couldn’t help herself.

“I did,” Michael said. “Back in the Points.”

“And do you think they’d be angry with you if you met again?”

“I wouldn’t know. They’re dead.”

Aba immediately felt guilty. “Oh God,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I never should have asked. I know you don’t like talking about all that.”

“It’s fine,” Michael said, looking down at his shoes.

“It was selfish of me.”

Michael shook his head and waved his hand as if to tell her there was no need for apologies. Still, he refused to look at her.

“Do you want to talk about them?” Aba asked. “Your siblings, I mean.”

“Seeing as I never have in the time you’ve known me…”

“Right. Of course.”

Again, they were silent, Michael focusing on his shoes with such concentration Aba half-expected his eyes to bore holes in them.

“I’m sorry,” Michael finally said. “I shouldn’t be cross with you.”

Aba tried to evaluate the sincerity of this statement. It sounded like the kind of thing one might say to an employer, anyone above one’s station really, after speaking a bit too honestly.

“It’s fine. I’m the one who should be sorry. And I am. Really.”

“Ah, quit apologizing, would you?”

This sounded more genuine, a completely inappropriate response to give a “social superior” in fact, and Aba relaxed somewhat as Michael finally picked his head up and looked her in the eye.

“I had an older sister and two younger brothers,” he said.

_And they’re all dead?_ Aba thought, but she didn’t need to ask that. Of course they were. That was what Michael had just said, wasn’t it? He didn’t need her emphasizing the point. Aba waited for him to say something more, only speaking when it became clear he wasn’t going to.

“Is that why you were always so quiet when I talked about my brother?”

For years Aba had regaled Michael with tales of her big brother, stories full of half-truths and sometimes utter fabrications, never thinking of the painful reminder this might have been for him.

“No. Well, maybe in a sense. The thing is, I’ve always just assumed he died.” Michael paused. “I’m sorry, Miss Aba. That was never something I meant to tell you.”

“He didn’t die.”

“How would you—? Did you meet him then?”

Michael looked surprised but not as excited as Aba would have expected. Clearly he was wiser than her and knew enough to be wary of any meeting between siblings raised in such different circumstances.

“Yes,” Aba said. “I met him.”

“And?”

“It didn’t go well.”

Michael nodded solemnly as if he had expected such an answer, then quickly said, “I’m sure you could make up for it when you see him again.” He didn’t sound particularly sure, but Aba appreciated the sentiment nonetheless.

“I don’t think that will be happening,” she said

“Maybe you can make it happen. I mean, you’ve been wanting this since… well, forever.”

“Yeah, well…” Now it was Aba who looked down, drawing patterns in the loose dirt of the courtyard with her toe.

“Well, what?”

“I punched him.”

“You punched him?”

“He was very rude.”

Aba told Michael the story, told him about taking the trolley with Isabella, about seeing the man in the cap, learning he was her brother, learning that that didn’t matter to him as much as she thought it would.

“And then I punched him,” she said, after recounting the “tainted meat” part of the conversation.

“Good for you then,” Michael said. “I would’ve punched him too for that. I will punch him if I ever meet him.”

“You probably won’t.”

Aba felt tears forming in her eyes and her throat constricting. Not wanting to cry about her brother in front of someone who had lost all his siblings, she excused herself, not looking back when Michael called after her.

 

With two days now before the ball, everyone in the house, staff included, was agitated for one reason or another. Mrs. Connell, having previously complained to Aba about a lack of sufficient kitchen staff, was now, after Aba subsequently passed the message along to Mrs. Langdon, complaining of a surplus—“it’s too many people to manage and in such a small space too.” June and Therese, the household’s newest maids, were greatly and vocally frustrated by Mrs. Banks, the housekeeper, barring them from setting foot within the ballroom or from even talking with the waiters, all of whom, it was rumored, were at least six feet tall and handsome to boot. Meanwhile, Mrs. Banks, the housekeeper, was greatly and vocally frustrated with June and Therese and Mrs. Langdon’s exhortation that she try to reason with them instead of sacking them as she wanted to do. “Ever since she read that stupid book,” Mrs. Banks would mutter under her breath, referring to the famous Sedgewick novel from which Aba’s last name had been selected. Even Michael, who would be busiest before and after the ball fetching horses and carriages, was on edge.

“You should see the way some of these groomsmen treat their horses,” he told Aba. “Always showing up poorly shoed, riled up, frightening _my_ horses. And their grooms don’t do a damn thing about it neither.”

“That sounds frustrating,” Aba said, disinterestedly.

“Yeah, well, it is.”

“Hmm.”

“I’ll be busy from nine on so you’ll have to come down earlier than that to show me your get-up.”

“What?” Aba asked. “Why would I show you my dress?”

She was starting to feel as if she were the only one with the sense not to care about this silly debut.

“So I can take a look,” Michael said. “You know, make sure you’re presentable and all that.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Michael smiled impishly. “Nah, it’s not that. I just think you’ll look pretty and I’d like to see. You know, seeing as you usually look like something drug in on the paw of a wet dog.”

“Shut up,” Aba said, punching Michael on the arm a bit harder than she intended.

Michael flinched and made a show of rubbing his arm. “Seriously, though, you’ll be good, I’m sure.”

Aba wasn’t sure what there was to “be,” other than quiet and pretty, but she smiled anyway.

“I don’t know about that,” she said.

“Well, that’s why you gotta come see me before. I’ll fix you right up.”

The night of the ball, Aba found herself so tightly wrapped she wasn’t sure she’d even be able to make it down the stairs for Michael’s promised looking-over. Although her gown had been made especially for her—the measuring and remeasuring process taking hours—it still seemed much too small to Aba. Her corset laces had been pulled so tight—the only way she could possibly fit into the gown’s ridiculously narrow bodice—each breath felt more like a hiccup than a true intake of air.

“I think you look beautiful,” Isabella reassured her.

Remaining conscious and upright were Aba’s main concerns, not beauty, but she thanked Isabella all the same and carefully made her way downstairs to see Michael, finding him in the courtyard and calling to him from the doorway, afraid to dirty the bottom of her dress by stepping foot outside.

“Miss Aba,” Michael said, wide-eyed. “You look… real nice.”

“No need to sound so surprised.”

“Right,” Michael said. “Sorry. I’m just—well, look at you.”

Aba rolled her eyes, smiling in spite of herself and realizing, with some surprise, that she had not even bothered to look at herself in a mirror, too preoccupied with her discomfort to notice much else.

“My corset’s so tight,” she said, “I think it’s crushed my ribs.”

“Well, that’s no good,” Michael said. Then, brightening, “Bet it’s worth it, though.”

“It certainly is not.”

“Not even to look like a proper lady for once?”

“Not even then,” Aba said.

She was right. It wasn’t worth it, but only because nothing was. Looking at herself in her dresser mirror after leaving Michael, she had to admit she did look quite nice. While Isabella had eventually opted for a pink gown complete with lace frills at the top, Aba had chosen a simpler dress, dark green with gold brocade along the hem. Against Mrs. Langdon’s protestations, she had insisted on wearing her hair in a low, twisted bun rather than the ringlets that suited Isabella and Genevieve so well but interacted with Aba’s much tighter curls to ill effect, leaving her hair a frizzy mess. Turning her head from side to side, Aba decided she had made the right choice.

“Not worth it,” she muttered, clutching the dresser for support, as the head turning made her dizzy, but smiling nonetheless.


End file.
